Dead On Arrival
by samlover14
Summary: Nick was 16 when he died in 1781. Now he's a ghost, still dreaming of the girl he'd never met that was his soulmate. Jeff is 16 in 2015, just a genderfluid teen trying to live his life. Ghost/human stuff, Revolutionary War stuff, soulmate AU, Niff


_Jeff is genderfluid and goes by the pronoun "he". I swear to Jesus there is a happy ending and you won't be crying your eyes out.  
_

* * *

**Dead On Arrival**

Ghosts have Deathday Parties for sure and probably get high and do some crazy stuff because hey they're already dead. Well, most of them do. Nick Duval was clearly an exception. He spent most of his time sleeping or moping about or well… that's basically it, because ghosts are pretty boring, but especially Nick. He still lived in the house where he'd died at the mere age of 16. Many people had lived in the house since then, it had been in family hands for a while, then sold to someone else, then continually sold for many years, but then the house market fell in the toilet, and the current owners, it seemed, couldn't sell it, so they were renting it. The new tenants actually surprised Nick. A mother and her teenage son.

Nick liked teenagers. He liked to see them living their lives. Like he hadn't gotten to do. When he'd been alive…. It was a different time then. He'd seen so much since then, just from the families to come and go in the house. Electricity. That was a good invention. He liked the tiny light-up things they kept in their pockets now too. Phones. But not like the original phones. A lot can happen when you're dead for 234 years.

There was nothing really special about the new people. At least that's what Nick thought at first.

Nick was one of the oldest ghosts in America – at least one of the oldest that wasn't native. He knew some Native American spirits that had been around thousands of years longer than he had. He knew a few ghosts of girls who'd died in the Salem Witch Trials too, but this is getting off track here. At any rate, he was pretty sure he was going senile in his old age, and had a tendency to stave off the boredom by narrating everything he witnessed.

"And there is the new kid, I forgot his name, I think it's Jerry. He is… doing homework. Way to go, Jerry. Stay in school, kid. It's science of some kind. Science is incredible these days, to think smallpox is eradicated. The science Jerry has appears to be simplistic in nature based on the way he keeps turning the pages. Jerry has now closed the book and appears bored…"

And so it went on. One night, about a month after they'd moved in, it was nighttime, but Nick was sitting at the foot of the bed, watching the teenager sleep.

"Jerry appears to be asleep, though his breathing patterns differ from those in deep sleep–"

"It gets kind of difficult to sleep with you yapping all the time," the kid mumbled. "And my name is _Jeff_, not Jerry."

Nick was taken aback. No one over the age of five had ever acknowledged his presence and no one had heard him in a very long time.

"Can you… hear me?" Nick asked.

"Yeah, now shut up, I have a test tomorrow," Jeff said, pulling the blankets further over him.

"Uh…okay. Night Jeff."

"Shh."

The next day when Jeff got home from school, Nick was sitting on top of the bookcase in the corner.

"Can you always hear me or just at night?" Nick asked without precedent.

"Well I can hear you now," Jeff said.

"Can you see me?" Nick asked. Jeff spun aroud, looking around the room in confusion. "So that's a no."

"What do you want?" Jeff sighed.

"Nothing," Nick shrugged.

"You're the imprint of a departed soul, living in my bedroom, I think it's safe to say you have unfinished business," Jeff said.

"Me? Uh… no. Just chillin," Nick said, with an attempt at nonchalance that failed miserably.

"Alright, well, I have homework," Jeff said, rolling his eyes.

Nick didn't know why until he saw Jeff write his name at the top of his paper just then, but he'd been feeling a strange pull toward Jeff in the month he'd lived there.

_Jeff Sterling_

Sterling. Nick looked at his own wrist, frowning at it, then moving closer and accidentally passing through Jeff to compare the handwriting. It was similar, it could almost be identical. Jeff was probably a very, very far descendent of the poor soul that had had Nick as a soulmate over 200 years ago.

Rosie. Nick often wondered what had happened to her, if she'd ever found love. Well, if Jeff was any indication, she probably had. That cheered him up a little.

"If you're standing in me right now, could you move? All my hoodies are dirty and it's cold," Jeff said. Nick moved across the room, realizing. "Thanks."

Nick stared at Jeff, wondering, since Jeff and this Rosie were distant relatives (he didn't know if it was true for sure, but he'd decided it was), wondering what Rosie might have looked like. Not too much different from how Jeff looked, was the conclusion Nick came to, though he imagined her in a colonial style floor length ball gown.

His mind wandered, as it often did. Would she have been a Loyalist? Would she have had a brother that took up arms against the Colonists? Nick dwelled on these thoughts a lot more than the average person because, well, he was dead and he had very little else to do. Also, things like this tend to get you down after a while, especially when you're shot and don't die instantly, instead lingering long enough to get sent home and die in your own bedroom. Like Nick was. He was sure the musket ball wound was still there, he was only half sure if the musket ball was still there, he couldn't remember if they'd taken it out. He knew modern medicine would have saved him if he hadn't been born 250 years too early.

"You're blocking my light," Jeff complained. Nick realized he was in front of the window, and darted to one side. "Thank you."

Come to think of it, Jeff had been around a month now and Nick didn't think he'd seen him smile once. That needed to change. Jeff got up, went to the bathroom, and came back, returning to his desk chair and textbook.

"So… this guy who suffers from premature ejaculation just comes out of nowhere," Nick said randomly. Jeff frowned, cocking his head slightly, in the general direction of where the sound was coming from.

"Excuse me?" Jeff asked.

"I'm telling jokes now. Lighten up," Nick said.

"No thanks," Jeff replied.

"What kind of weirdo doesn't like puns?" Nick asked.

"I'm busy right now," Jeff said. Nick was quiet the rest of the day.

* * *

"You're here, aren't you?" Jeff's voice came in the middle of the night.

"I seldom leave," Nick replied. Jeff sat up in bed. Nick perched himself on the footboard, facing Jeff, not that Jeff could see him.

"Why are you here?" Jeff asked. "What's the deal? Why do you live in my bedroom?"

"I'm not totally sure, but as I've gathered, ghosts tend to linger where they died," Nick said. "Going too far away is like… getting stretched too thin, like butter scraped over too much bread, like I don't exist."

"Nice lord of the rings reference," Jeff said. "You don't exist. You're a ghost. Maybe you're not a ghost. Maybe you're just a voice."

"No, I'm a ghost," Nick said. "I've been around, I'm certain on that one."

"How old were you? When you died?" Jeff asked.

"16," Nick replied. Jeff seemed to contemplate this.

"I'm 16," Jeff finally replied.

"I actually can see you, thanks for the update though," Nick said sarcastically.

"You certainly sound like a teenager, you big _nerd_," Jeff said.

"Oh shush," Nick said. "Go to sleep."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Okay… don't go to sleep," Nick shrugged. "I don't care. I'm going to sleep."

"You're a ghost."

"And I usually sleep when you're at school, but I'm sure no one will judge me if I took a nice snooze here in the middle of the night," Nick said. "I don't have anyone to scare tonight, I've hit my quota for the month."

"You're trying to act all cool like I haven't heard you trying to narrate my life for a month," Jeff said, lying back down.

"Yeah, well, I'll start doing it again," Nick said. "Here we have Jerry, resident yellow-haired freakshow, resisting the sleep he knows is coming for him."

"You could read me to sleep," Jeff offered, as though this wasn't a strange request. "And you could also not call me a freakshow."

"I can't turn pages," Nick said. "I'm a ghost, remember?"

"You'll figure it out," Jeff shrugged.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense…"

The sun was rising hours later, and Jeff, who had fallen asleep, was awake again, smiling to himself, and listening to Nick talk.

"… 'Oh, I will,' said Harry, and they were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face. '_They_ don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer…'," Nick finished.

"Encore," Jeff said sleepily.

"Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at Number Four, Privet Drive," Nick began.

"No, I was joking," Jeff laughed.

"You're laughing," Nick said.

"And?"

"You haven't done that before," Nick said.

"Oh," Jeff said, unable to stop smiling, though he was no longer amused. "Oh."

"It's nice," Nick said.

"D'you have a name?" Jeff asked suddenly.

"Of course I do," Nick frowned. "Nicholas P. Duval, III, Rhode Island Regiment."

"….Really?" Jeff asked.

"Uh…yeah," Nick said.

"Duval is French. Came to Maryland in the 1600s, then to Louisiana in the 1700s. Literally means 'of the valley'," Jeff said.

"Uh… sure," Nick said, hesitating.

"Here _we_ are, in Rhode Island, it's 2015, and you fought in the Battle of Yorktown," Jeff said.

"I was fatally wounded in the Battle of Yorktown," Nick said. "And you know a creepy amount about me."

"This is called a phone, we can search things on them now, this is an ancestry website," Jeff said very slowly as if explaining to a child.

"I know what a phone is," Nick rolled his eyes.

"Although what it doesn't say is if you were an American or a Brit," Jeff said, locking his phone and setting it down.

"Does it matter?" Nick asked.

"To you, I imagine it does, yes," Jeff nodded.

"American," Nick said.

"I figured," Jeff replied.

"Was your family here then?" Nick asked, though he supposed he knew the answer.

"The Sterlings?" Jeff asked. "I think so. Dad used to talk about ancestry a lot. Some Sterling settled in Boston in like 1600-something. Scottish."

"Oh, you look it," Nick laughed.

"Oh shush," Jeff said.

"Was your family on the side of America or the British?" Nick asked.

"You know, I don't know," Jeff said. "I can't imagine any Scots fighting for the British, though, let's be real."

200-some odd years and Nick finally had an acceptable answer. Rosie would have been a Colonist. He imagined her to be much like Jeff, but with ginger hair flying about and more skirts than were ever necessary, trying to climb over fences and learning to shoot a musket.

"Nick?" Jeff asked.

"Yeah?" Nick asked, looking back at Jeff.

"Thanks for reading to me," Jeff said.

"No problem," Nick said.

So it continued. Nick hung around with Jeff, telling him stories, helping with his homework and stuff.

Jeff was at school one day, about three months after he'd moved into Nick's house. He was talking to his friends at lunch, because yes he has friends.

"Met my soulmate on Sunday," Aimee said. "Hate him. Total straight boy."

"Met yours yet, Jeffy?" Emily asked him.

"Yeah," Jeff said uncertainly. "I think it might be glitched. I don't think he knows it's me."

"Aww, Jeffy."

"Doesn't matter," Jeff said with a shrug. "I don't think I want to get married anyway."

"It's not about getting married," Emily said. "It's about finding your soulmate. Sometimes it's not about romantic or sexual attraction, it's about finding a person that you're going to want to be around for the rest of your life."

"Yeah," Aimee nodded. "Having Jason around forever is going to _suck_."

"What's your soulmate's name again?" Emily asked Jeff.

"Nick."

"Does he go to our school?" Emily asked. "I'll meet him and tell you if he's perfect for you."

"No, he doesn't go here, he's a bit…older," Jeff said. "I do like having him around, I just don't know if he feels the same way about me. I told you, I think it's glitched. I've read about it happening."

"Well, I read about this girl in Louisiana whose soulmate was Vincent Van Gogh, the painter, and she pretty much pulled a Romeo and Juliet, but that doesn't mean that that's a regular occurrence," Aimee said. "Talk to him. Casually slip it in." Jeff sighed, rubbing the beautiful calligraphy on his wrist, not for the first time wishing it would say anything other than _Nicholas P. Duval, III_.

* * *

"What do you look like?" Jeff asked, randomly without pretense one day. He was lying in his bed, it was Saturday, late at night. Snow was falling outside. "Can you even see yourself?"

"Yeah, I can see myself," Nick said. "You might be able to too."

"Really?" Jeff asked, interested, sitting up in bed.

"Yeah, it's a full moon," Nick said. "It's a little cloudy, but..."

"What even?" Jeff asked.

"Moonlight," Nick said. "It illuminates ghosts. Do you have a candle?"

"I think Mom might in the kitchen," Jeff said. "Why?"

"I wanna have a séance. Meet me in the attic," Nick said. He disappeared through the ceiling. Jeff, confused, walked to the kitchen, got a candle and a lighter, and headed upstairs into the attic. "Alright, good, you're here." Jeff jumped at the sudden noise.

"Jesus Christ you scared me," Jeff said.

"Yeah? Well watch this," Nick said. Nick ran in circles around Jeff, whooshing all the dust into a mini tornado until it exploded and everything was dust free.

"You're a little nuts sometimes," Jeff replied.

"I'm a little nuts all the time, I've been dead for 234 years," Nick said. "Sit down in the circle."

"What circle?" Jeff asked.

"The one I drew in the dust," Nick frowned. Jeff sat down and Nick sat down opposite him. "Put the candle in the center of the circle and light it."

"How do you know how to do a séance?" Jeff asked.

"I know some witches. They live in Salem, nice girls," Nick said. "Put your hands out like we were gonna hold hands if I were real." Jeff did, and Nick met Jeff's hands with his own.

"It's cold," Jeff said.

"Won't be in a second," Nick said. "Close your eyes." Jeff did as he was told. Nick began his séance, calling himself out of the spirit world, speaking in Latin, and suddenly…

Jeff's eyes flew open and his stomach dropped, his inclination was to jump back, but Nick was holding his hands. Nick. With actual solid form. An actual body, presumably his own. Nick, with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. Nick, in the white pants and the blue jacket of a Colonial soldier. Nick, with a smile too perfect to have come from the 1700s. Nick, who despite having been dead for 234, was now warm and in front of him and…

Outside, an icicle broke off the eave of the house and shattered to the ground. Jeff automatically turned to the sound, and when he looked back, Nick was once again gone, and it was cold once more. He felt dizzy. He wasn't okay…

"Jeff… are you okay?" Nick asked, concerned. His movements towards Jeff extinguished the candle. Nick tried to attend to him, but alas he was merely a ghost. Jeff had passed out, falling backwards to the floor, knocking his head rather hard. "Jeff? You've gotta be okay kid, cuz there's nothing I can do for you…" No response. Nothing. No blood, thankfully. "C'mon, Jeff, I promised I wouldn't ever do this, but I'm not gonna have much choice…." Nothing.

Nick took a deep breath, then sighed it out, losing his nerve. Taking another deep breath, he closed his eyes and dove into Jeff's body.

The first thing he noticed about Jeff's body was the temperature. He was chilled to the bone, and while it had something to do with the ghost taking control of his body, it also had to do with the fact that it was well below 0 degrees outside and the attic had always been poorly insulated.

Focus, Nick. Get Jeff back downstairs.

Easier said than done. 234 years was a long time, and Nick didn't quite have the controls down. He clumsily stood up, realizing how tall Jeff was when he banged Jeff's head on the low attic ceiling.

"Oh, Jeff's tall, Jeff's tall…" Nick muttered, surprising himself when he spoke in Jeff's voice. He wobbled to the stairs and managed not to tumble down them, eventually getting to Jeff's bedroom and into his bed. Nick sighed his relief shutting his eyes briefly before opening them again and remembering he was in Jeff's body. It isn't good for bodies to be inhabited by ghosts. Even Nick was beginning to feel lightheaded in Jeff's body. He instinctively brought his hand up to his head, and Nick saw for the first time the handwriting on Jeff's wrist. His own handwriting. His own name.

Nick evacuated Jeff's body more quickly than anyone had ever done before, and flew back into the attic.

He hadn't even suspected this, not even a little bit, not in the months they'd been … hanging out? Was that even the right term?

It had to be glitched, because Nick's said Rosie, and Jeff's name was Jeff. There was no other explanation. It was just glitched, Nick would just tell Jeff it was glitched.

Although…

Nope. No although, ghost/human interactions don't work, it doesn't work, it just doesn't. Nick could give himself corporeal form for a few seconds in a séance, but that was it. He was dead, and he was beginning to doubt if he was really real.

Down in his bed, Jeff woke up suddenly. He rubbed his head where it had hit the ground and looked around. Had he dreamed the whole thing? How did he get here? Why was he freezing?

"Nick?" Jeff asked the empty room. No response. Nick had never not responded before. Was it all a dream? Was it all in his head? Had the bonk on the head cleared him of his insanity? How had he bonked his head if he wasn't in the attic? How did he get back here if he was in the attic?

Questions for the morning. He pulled his blankets tighter around him, and tried to sleep.

Impossible.

When the sun rose, he knew he'd eventually drifted off, but he didn't have that fulfilled feeling of having actually slept. When he woke, he looked around his room, and halfheartedly asked, "Nick?"

"I'm here," Nick replied quietly. He was perched on the bookshelf. Jeff smiled at his voice.

"Good, I was beginning to think I was nuts," Jeff said. "How'd I get out of the attic?"

"I took over your body and put you back in your bed," Nick said quietly.

"Oh. Okay," Jeff said. "Makes sense." He shrugged, yawned, hopped out of bed, and headed for the bathroom. Nick waited for him to return. "Still here?"

"I do live here," Nick said. "But isn't it an odd coincidence that you do."

"Is that supposed to be mean? I can't really tell with your tone of voice sometimes," Jeff said.

"No, I'm just asking how you, of all people, came to live here," Nick said.

"You saw," Jeff quickly deduced. "You saw when you were in my body."

"I saw," Nick confirmed. "How could you not tell me?"

"Because you're _dead_!" Jeff yelled. "You're dead and I don't want that there, the whole system is bullshit, but I can't get a tattoo to cover it until I'm 18."

"Why are you here, Jeff? Did you google me? Did you know this was my house? Beg your mom to let you come here?" Nick asked. Jeff swallowed.

"Yeah."

"Well it's glitched," Nick said.

"No shit, Sherlock," Jeff rolled his eyes, falling back into his pillows.

"Not just because I'm dead, Jeff," Nick said. "I don't have Jeffrey Sterling written on me."

"Of course you don't," Jeff said.

"I mean, I like you, and I wish I was alive, so we could be friends," Nick said quickly. "But that's not gonna happen."

"Cuz you're dead."

"Because I am dead, yes," Nick said with a nod.

"I'm just gonna complicate things really quick," Jeff said. "Alright with you?"

"Sure."

"I think I'm falling for you," Jeff said.

"Jeff."

"Yeah?"

"I'm dead."

"I know," Jeff nodded.

"Just checking," Nick replied.

Still, Nick did really like Jeff and felt pulled to him. It made sense, if Jeff was the great-great-descendent of his soulmate, that he would be pulled to him. Nick imagined what Rosie would be like more than ever.

* * *

If he'd ever had the sense to ask Jeff about it, Jeff would have been floored. Because Jeff had a secret. One only his friends knew.

"Hi Jeff," Emily greeted him. Jeff pointed to headband holding back his blond hair that morning. "Sorry Rosie. Been a while since we've seen you."

"Felt like a female day," Jeff – Rosie said.

"Shopping?" Emily asked. Jeff nodded enthusiastically. "I'll text Aimee to meet us there."

"How's Jason?" Jeff asked Aimee at lunch.

"Not as horrible as I originally thought," Aimee said. "Still a total straight boy. How's it going with Nick? Has he met Rosie yet?"

"No," Jeff said. "It's… complicated."

"You're genderfluid, Jeff, it's complicated, there's literally a word for it," Emily said. "Tell him to get a dictionary."

"Welll…." Jeff sighed. "It's really complicated."

"You know, you see this guy an awful lot for someone who never leaves their house besides school," Emily said.

"Yup," Jeff agreed.

"What's he like? Where does he live?" Aimee pressed.

"I'm not saying anything else, we decided it's definitely glitched, and I'm not saying anything else about it," Jeff shook his head.

"Alright," Aimee rolled her eyes.

Jeff danced into his bedroom that afternoon with his purchases, humming to himself.

"You went shopping without me?" Nick asked, mock hurt in his voice. "I hope you bought me something pretty."

"Bite me," Jeff rolled his eyes.

"If you insist," Nick sighed. Jeff began unpacking his purchases to hang them in his closet. Among a few plaid button ups was also a little black dress and a pink top. "Nice dress."

"Don't hate me cuz you ain't me," Jeff said. "I happen to look fabulous in this dress."

"You better if you're going to spend 69.50 on it," Nick said.

"First of all, it was 50% off, and secondly, do I need to put this bitch on because _I look fabulous in this dress_," Jeff repeated.

"I didn't say you wouldn't, I'm saying where I come from, men don't wear dresses unless they're in a play," Nick said.

"It's 2015 and also fuck your gender stereotypes, Nick," Jeff snarked. "I'm genderfluid, and I'll explain what that means to you, because apparently you're too stuck in the Boston Tea Party to figure it out: It means sometimes I'm Jeff, and sometimes I'm Rosie." Silence. Nick stared. Finally he spoke, very quietly.

"Jeff…"

"Don't talk to me," Jeff scoffed.

"No, seriously…"

"No, you seriously, just stay dead for a while until I've calmed down," Jeff said, a dangerous layer of ice building in his voice.

"Jeff, this is important…"

"Go. Be. Dead."

"Rosie Sterling is what's written on my arm," Nick continued, his voice quiet and very serious.

"What?" Jeff asked, turning around to address the seemingly empty room. "Since when?"

"Been there for 250 years, and it's not changing," Nick said.

"Wait… if your name is on me, and my name is on you…. Then… nothing is glitched, and we're soulmates," Jeff said.

"I don't know about 'nothing', I'm still dead," Nick said. "Also I was 6 when the Boston Tea Party happened."

"You are still dead," Jeff said. "I bet this one's never happened before."

"Ghost/human? No, I don't think so," Nick said.

"I wish you weren't dead," Jeff said.

"I wish I wasn't dead too," Nick agreed.

"Because I know I'm in love with you," Jeff continued.

"I think I love you too," Nick said, surprising himself a little bit, as that wasn't what he'd intended to say. "I've had this idea of what she would be like in my head for so long, but you're nothing like what I imagined."

"Of course not," Jeff rolled his eyes.

"You're better," Nick said.

The image of Nick sitting in the attic with him was burned into Jeff's mind. He couldn't get away from it. Days passed, but neither of them brought up the soulmate issue again.

Finally, it was a full moon again, it was Christmas Eve.

"Jeff, wake up," Nick said.

"Why? It's Christmas. Santa is going to be here soon," Jeff said.

"Yeah, well, I think I've worked it out, so get your candle and meet me in the attic," Nick said.

"I didn't feel good for days after the last time we did this…" Jeff whined.

"That's cuz I was in your body. Now get out of bed, get your candle, and meet me in the attic before I get in there and make you," Nick said.

"You wouldn't dare," Jeff scowled.

"Watch me," Nick said, taking a dive at Jeff, but instead of going inside, merely sat on him, making him very very cold.

"Oi!" Jeff said, uselessly trying to bat Nick away.

"If you move, you'll be warmer," Nick teased. "Also put on a few more layers, it's cold in the attic."

Jeff reluctantly got out of bed, pulled a few more layers on, and did as he was asked. Nick was waiting for him in the attic, the circle from last time was still drawn on the floor.

"This is going to be draining," Nick said. "Literally draining."

"What are you going to do?" Jeff asked, sitting down where he'd sat before.

"What I did before only… better," Nick said.

"How better? What's going on?" Jeff asked.

"I just want you to close your eyes and trust me," Nick said. "You're going to feel drained for maybe several minutes. You're going to feel like you're dying. But you're not going to die, and if you don't trust me, then we can't do this."

"I trust you," Jeff said, closing his eyes and holding out his hands.

Careful not to extinguish the candle or lose focus, Nick spoke the Latin he'd been memorizing for weeks. It went on and on, and it was so cold in the attic, Jeff honestly thought he might die.

Every part of his body was cold, especially his fingers, but he didn't dare open his eyes. He trusted Nick. He barely even knew Nick, but he would trust him with anything.

Nick was slowly draining the life out of Jeff and sapping it for himself. Slowly enough that it wouldn't kill Jeff, he hoped.

It was minutes, maybe even an hour later when Nick changed his chant. Looking at the pale skin on both of their arms, knowing they were soulmates, Nick carefully spoke the last words.

Bright blue light seemed to spark from where their hands met, envelope them both and then shoot out in all directions, including into both Nick and Jeff. The candle, burning low, was extinguished completely.

"Jeff?" Nick asked. Jeff barely grunted, not sure he was capable of speech. He was dizzy, nauseated, and he knew he was going to die. "Open your eyes."

Jeff didn't know if he could open his eyes or if he was even still alive, but he did get them open.

He nearly died of shock.

He couldn't see clearly, because the candle had gone out, but the full moon was shining in the window, and Nick was definitely solid. Solid and real and … alive?

"Nicky," Jeff barely mumbled, trying to reach for him. Nick grasped his hands even tighter.

"You need some juice and a good night's sleep, but you'll be fine," Nick smiled. "I'll carry you downstairs." Jeff didn't say anything else, or maybe he couldn't, but Nick heaved him up and somehow got him back into his bed. After ferreting around the kitchen, he found some juice and brought a glass of it to Jeff. "Sleep well, love." He kissed Jeff on the forehead lightly.

"I love you," Jeff muttered.

"I know," Nick replied.

When Jeff awoke the next morning, the events of the night before were a bit fuzzy, but when he opened his eyes and properly saw Nick standing at his closet, going through the clothes in it, he suddenly remembered and was quite taken aback.

"Nick," Jeff said, almost panicked.

"Good morning," Nick replied, holding a long sleeve v-neck up to his bare chest before shrugging and putting it on.

"You're alive," Jeff shrewdly observed.

"It would seem that you are too," Nick said. "With intelligence like that, I'm sure you'll do well in life."

"You're alive though," Jeff declared.

"Yeah. Here's my question, what is with jeans? Why are they simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable? Why are they tight around my ankles? Have you people ever heard of belts?" Nick asked.

"Yeah, they're in the drawer," Jeff said offhandedly. "Nick, you were dead. And now you're not."

"Yeah, you were almost dead there for a while, drink your juice," Nick said, as if the subject was not really important.

"You died. You were shot at the battle of Yorktown, you were dead," Jeff said.

"Well, honey, let me explain you a thing," Nick said. "I am now not dead, Merry Christmas, _drink your juice_." Jeff cautiously picked up his glass of juice and sipped from it.

"You were shot," Jeff repeated.

"Yep."

"You died."

"Yep."

"So do you still have a bullet wound?" Jeff asked.

"Yep."

"Is that a stable body, or are you just going to die again soon?" Jeff asked.

"It's stable," Nick said. "I told you, I know some witches."

"Because scars are kinda sexy," Jeff said.

"Are they now?" Nick asked.

"I think they are," Jeff said.

"Are you trying to seduce me, Jeffrey? Because I may look like your run of the mill teenager, but I am a traditional gentlemen, I will have to be wooed," Nick said.

"I think you're the man here," Jeff pointed out.

"I will have to do some wooing," Nick rephrased.

"As far as grand romantic gestures go, you kinda brought yourself back to life," Jeff said. "That's love bitch."

"Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Nick said. "How do I look?"

"Are you really keeping the hat?" Jeff asked, frowning at Nick's tricorner hat.

"Yes, but maybe not on my head," Nick said, taking it off. "Ew. Hat hair."

"I love you," Jeff sighed, shaking his head and smiling.

"I know you do," Nick smiled back at him. "I love you too." He crossed the room and jumped onto Jeff's bed. "I'm gonna kiss you now. If that's okay."

"That's totally okay," Jeff agreed. Nick pressed their lips together and everything was right with the world. The formerly brown ink on their arms burned into black. They were soulmates and not even in death do they part.

* * *

**A/N: Idk. Leave me a review?**


End file.
